This blog is written by a journalist based in Mumbai who writes about cities, the environment, developmental issues, the media, women and many other subjects.The title 'ulti khopdi' is a Hindi phrase referring to someone who likes to look at things from the other side.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

First Babri, now Dadri

First there was Babri; now there is Dadri. And in
between, Godhra. Since 1992 and the demolition of the Babri Masjid by
Hindutva fanatics, India has moved steadily and inexorably into becoming
an intolerant country where the majority rules and minorities live in
fear. That process has hit an important marker, one we will not forget,
with Dadri, where Mohammed Akhlaq was brutally bludgeoned to death on
the mere suspicion that he had beef in his house.

On
his recent visit to Silicon Valley, the Prime Minister tried to sell the
world the promise of a Digital India and declared that the 21st Century
would be India’s. That is a distant dream; the hate politics that
exemplifies the murder of Akhlaq is the current reality. And for this,
the responsibility lies not only with fringe groups but equally with a
government and a ruling party that has legitimised interference in all
aspects of our lives by promoting a culture of bans and prohibition. It
has claimed the right to decide what we eat, what we wear, what we read,
what we view, who we meet, who we marry, who we worship and ultimately
what we think.

If senior Bharatiya Janata Party
functionaries can pass off Mohammed Akhlaq’s cold-blooded murder as an
“accident” and an “unfortunate incident”, the same justification will be
used when women are sexually assaulted for crossing the moral line
determined by people with the same mind set as those who killed Akhlaq.
Once you breed this type of suspicion and hatred, and justify the
violence of your actions, no woman or man who thinks or acts differently
is safe. Is this the India we want?

We might think
that such things happen more frequently in the communal cauldron of
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. But look south. Look closely at what is
happening in a State like Karnataka. For decades there was peace. Yet,
the pace of communalisation has picked up and accelerated in the last
decade to the point that the district of Dakshina Kannada, in which the
cosmopolitan city of Mangaluru is located, has become the epicentre of
communal tension.

The fallout of this is felt most by
women who have become the targets of a twisted form of moral policing.
In a district where 67 per cent are Hindus, 24 per cent Muslims and 8
per cent Christians, where the sex ratio is skewed in favour of women
(1,020) unlike in the rest of the country, where female literacy is as
high as 91 per cent, where a human development indicator like the infant
mortality rate is substantially above the national average, young men
and women are virtually forbidden from hanging out together. If they
take the risk, they might have hell to pay.

Recent
reports speak of random attacks on young people hanging out at malls,
going to restaurants or going on a college trip in a so-called “mixed
group”. If Hindu girls are found with Muslim boys, the latter are
threatened and even beaten up while the former are warned. If girls,
regardless of religion are found drinking alcohol, they are dragged out
and shamed, as was done in the attack on a pub in 2009. If young men and
women organise a private party, that too is targeted by moral
vigilantes as happened in 2012 when one such birthday bash was broken up
and the entire incident televised.

So are we going
forwards, or steadily backwards? And how will this generation of young
women, educated, looking forward to careers, having access to
information and communication through the Internet, survive in a world
where every step they take is watched? In Mangaluru, a city with a huge
population of young people thronging the scores of high quality
educational institutions, such an atmosphere must be stifling, hardly
conducive to learning or creativity.

Today these are
stories from Mangaluru; tomorrow they will happen elsewhere in India. In
fact, they are happening but are not always reported.

Why
should one worry about the response, or rather the lack of it, by the
Central government to this growing culture of intolerance and violence?
After all, law and order is a state subject and in the case of the Dadri
murder, the State government of U.P. has intervened. But the
combination of a silent Prime Minister and an unrestrained, insensitive
and unapologetic Culture Minister (who readily expressed his regressive
views on what women can and cannot do), adds up to a virtual endorsement
of such actions.

Dadri is not a random incident; it
is part of a larger picture that is emerging of the kind of India some
people want to make. This is not the India envisioned by those who
fought for its independence from the British. In 1947, we looked forward
to a democratic, secular, plural India, where all religions are equal,
where women have rights, where freedom of expression is guaranteed. Join
the dots and you can see clearly that the idea of India that is now
being pushed envisions a monoculture where you are given no choice but
to conform.

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My profile

Journalist, columnist, writer based in Mumbai. Author of "Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's largest slum" (Penguin, 2000). Worked with The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express and Himmat Weekly.
Other books include "Whose News? The Media and Women's Issues" edited with Ammu Joseph (published by Sage 1994/2006), "Terror Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out" edited with Ammu Joesph (published by Kali for Women, 2003) and "Missing: Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters" (published by Zubaan, 2010).
Regular columns in The Hindu, Sunday Magazine and on The Hoot (www.thehoot.org).